Love Always Reviews

A well-intentioned, sweet-natured road movie about a young woman's voyage of self-discovery is undone by its naivete. Twenty-two-year-old Julia (Marisa Ryan), who six months earlier broke up with longtime boyfriend Mark (Michael Reilly Burke) because she wasn't ready to commit, receives a postcard from him proposing marriage. So she decides to hitchhike from her home in San Diego up to Spokane, WA, where he's just passed his bar exam and wants to set up housekeeping. Trouble is, Julia keeps getting distracted by the eccentrics she meets on the road, including a speed freak (Doug Hutchison) with a Jim Morrison fixation, an aging hippie (Beth Grant) with a truckload of ceramic cattle, a bunch of pretentious riot grrrls called the Virgin Sluts, a bookie (Jerry O'Donnell) who puts the moves on her, an AWOL marine (Aaron Kuhr) in a stolen humvee and a too-good-to-be-true photographer (Tracy Fraim). And let's not forget the long detour to Boston to attend the wedding of best friends Mary Ellen and Sean (Moon Zappa and James Victor). Writer/director Jude Pauline Eberhard's debut has the undigested feel of an adolescent's diary: It's full of incidents, but completely without the psychological insight and mature perspective that would give them significance or, at least, dramatic form. And, at the risk of sounding unkind, Julie's behavior is mind-bogglingly stupid: Leaving aside the whole issue of hitchhiking in California, serial-killer capitol of the world (how much could a bus ticket cost, for heaven's sake?), her answering machinephobia prevents her from leaving Mark a message that she's coming, with sadly predictable results.